UWGB gets grant to deter smoking UW-Green Bay will follow the program established by UW-Oshkosh By Michelle Kennedy News-Chronicle Inspired by a successful ongoing program at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh designed to get students to stop smoking, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay is instituting a similar plan. The project, led by Regan Gurung, a psychology professor at UW-Green Bay, has recently been boosted by a $41,720 grant from the Wisconsin Tobacco Control Board. Gurung said such an effort is necessary in order to respect both the rights of nonsmokers and smokers alike. While the main goal is to keep students from smoking, creating more suitable and less offensive smoking areas is among the priorities. Pointing to UW-Oshkosh's astounding 28 percent reduction in tobacco use, Gurung said the university's "visual" program for deterring smoking is so successful the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is considering using it as a model. "Currently at UWGB, there are five entrances where smokers are not allowed to smoke within 30 feet of the entrance," Gurung said. "But it isn't enforced very well, and there are no ashtrays out there for smokers to use. Ideally, the ashtrays would be set 30 feet out from the entrance to encourage that." UW-Green Bay encourages smokers who want to quit to visit the on-campus health center where nurses will help smokers develop a plan for quitting, but not everyone takes advantage of that, Gurung said, or even knows about it. At UW-Oshkosh, students created a large, visual campaign designed to illustrate the dangers of smoking, including a mannequin hung up that provided health information and a car on campus covered in anti-smoking messages. Diane Zanto, a nurse and the director of the UW-Oshkosh health center, said the school had a one-year grant for collecting data, and they were successful with that part of the program. As a part of the second year of the grant, the Wisconsin Tobacco Control Board allowed them to expand in the state. "That's how UWGB got involved," she said. The main focus of the Oshkosh program, Zanto said, has been to change policy, increase the use of educational materials, provide cessation services and denormalize use of tobacco through ads in student publications. Zanto believes the grant has allowed UW-Oshkosh to provide more aggressive cessation services to students through the health center because they now have the funds to dramatize the dangers of nicotine for students. "We have tar jars, pig lungs that have been affected by smoke, and carbon dioxide monitors that allow students to see how much carbon dioxide they are taking in," she said. Although Zanto has noticed more informal requests for "quit kits," there has not been a noticeable increase in requests for one-on-one counseling to help students quit smoking. "We are really excited about the opportunity to expand and collect more data," Zanto said. "We want to find out if this model works. We want to make sure we can disseminate it to all campuses throughout the state." Gurung said Green Bay will use the money to replicate the Oshkosh model, but "tweak it" for UW-Green Bay. He believes the Oshkosh example was successful because the students used visual props to illustrate their point, rather than excessive lecturing about the dangers of smoking. "In two weeks, we will do an assessment of student attitudes about smoking on our campus," he said. Gurung said invitations have already gone out to students who are currently active on various health-related campus committees to participate in the survey and subsequent campaign. He has also received interest from students in his psychology classes.